Original Members 17 



attention to art and antiquities, studying in Rome and other 

 Italian cities. On his return, for some five years, fox-hunting was 

 his chief occupation, and not till late in 1824 did he settle in London 

 and begin to work at Geology. Yet in the spring of 1826 he became 

 F.R.S. ! 1 He went to Yorkshire, where he saw how William Smith 

 worked in the field, and then took a long tour in Scotland, returning 

 thither with Sedgwick (page 22) next year, which had for its result 

 a paper on the Old Red Sandstone. In 1828 Murchison and his wife 

 were joined by Lyell (page 15) in a tour through Central France, 

 and then went to the Austrian Alps. Next year Murchison returned 

 to them with Sedgwick, and much valuable work was embodied 

 in a joint paper, and he made a third journey to them in 1830. 

 But next year the two friends attacked a geological ' no man's land,' 

 as it might be called, the region of ' greywacke,' underlying the 

 Old Red Sandstone, and supposed to be a barren, unfossiliferous 

 tract. It occupied, as then understood, a large part of Wales and 

 the Lake District, with most of Devon and Cornwall. The last 

 region was attacked by Murchison and Sedgwick in 1836, and in the 

 course of three years brought into order. Sedgwick explored the 

 Lake District, and the two made separate attacks on Wales ; 

 Murchison, in the summer of 1831, working from the edge of the 

 Old Red Sandstone westward to the more disturbed central region, 

 Sedgwick from the Menai Strait in a more or less southward direction. 

 They communicated their advances to the Geological Society, and 

 late in 1838 Murchison published his great work, The Silurian System. 

 We may pass over the subsequent controversy, which ultimately 

 estranged the two friends, because the main facts are now inseparable 

 from the history of British stratigraphy, and remark that the book 

 was a wonderful accomplishment for one man, even though much 

 aided, as Murchison was, by friends. In 1841 he made a long 

 journey in Russia, studying its geology and getting as far east as 

 the Ural Mountains and south as the Sea of Azov, the result being 

 another important book, Russia and the Ural Mountains, published 

 in 1845 after another visit to that country. Murchison continued 

 for some years to travel rather extensively, though within narrowing 

 limits, and in 1855, on the death of Sir Henry de la Beche (page 8), 

 succeeded him as Director-General of the Geological Survey. He 

 was again elected, in 1863, President of the Royal Geographical 

 Society, and so, always busy with official and consequent social duties, 

 with the revision of his books and preparation of addresses, he 

 continued his ever industrious life, till in 1869 his helpmate Lady 

 Murchison was taken from him, and after a stroke of paralysis, late 

 in the following year, he quietly passed away on Oct. 22nd, 1871. 



1 A frank remark of the President, quoted in Geikie's Life of Murchison, 

 vol. i. p. 129, justifies the agitation for reform in the Royal Society, of which 

 the Philosophical Club was one outcome. 



P.C. B 



